Maree de Latour

A finished renovation can look effortless.

A new kitchen flows naturally into the living room. A once-unused room suddenly has a purpose. Storage seems to appear exactly where it is needed. Light, colour and materials all seem to belong together.

What the finished photographs don't show are the hundreds of decisions that happened before them.

Someone had to listen. Someone had to understand what the homeowners were really trying to achieve. Someone had to turn those ideas into a practical design, find the right products, coordinate contractors and suppliers, navigate the unexpected problems that inevitably appear during construction, and keep the project moving towards the original vision.

For many homeowners across central Auckland, that person is Maree de Latour.

Maree is the owner of Refresh Renovations Auckland Central.

Her approach to renovation has been shaped by a career that crosses design, business, procurement and construction.

Before working in residential renovation, Maree spent 10 years with Fletcher Building in marketing roles and later worked with Furnz Group, where her career developed into business development and design leadership. As Design Director, she led work encompassing design, procurement, project management and delivery for new and refurbished hotel projects.

That background influences the way she thinks about homes today.

For Maree, good design isn't about imposing a particular aesthetic or reproducing the latest trend. It's about the people living there.

She believes homes should reflect the personality and lifestyle of their owners rather than becoming a standardised, 'cookie cutter' solution. Her experience sourcing products in New Zealand and overseas also gives her a broad understanding of the options available when finding solutions for individual projects.

And that changes the starting question.

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Instead of simply asking, “What should we build?”, the conversation becomes: “How do you want to live?”

The before-and-after photographs accompanying this story capture one of Maree and her team's recent projects.

The earlier spaces are recognisable to many homeowners: rooms that work, but no longer work particularly well.

A living area waiting for a clearer purpose. Utility spaces accumulated over years of use. Rooms that could do more. Areas of the home that had become disconnected from the way the family actually wanted to live.

Then comes the transformation.

The completed home feels very different. A contemporary kitchen now becomes part of the living environment, with a large island bringing the spaces together. Cabinetry, lighting, finishes and storage have been considered as a whole rather than as isolated elements.

Other rooms have been given clearer purposes - including calm bedroom and home-office spaces and a more considered laundry and utility area.

But Maree's work isn't adequately represented by an after photograph.

Because renovation is not simply the act of replacing old things with new ones.

It is the process of getting from one to the other.

And that process is where experience matters.

Residential renovation is unusually personal.

A construction site might also be someone's kitchen, bedroom or family living room. Decisions about cost, programme and materials are mixed with decisions about how a family wants to live for the next ten or twenty years.

Design has to meet reality. Trades need coordinating. Suppliers need following up. Questions need answering. And when something does not go exactly according to plan, someone needs to find a way forward.

That ability to bring the different parts of a project together appears repeatedly in feedback about Maree's work.

Customers describe strong communication, attention to detail and an ability to coordinate suppliers and contractors and resolve issues during a renovation. Others highlight the confidence that came from being kept informed throughout the project.

It's an aspect of construction that can easily be overlooked.

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We often celebrate the building. We don't always celebrate the person who made the building possible.

Maree's work has also been recognised within the Refresh Renovations network.

She received Customer Service of the Year in 2025, following both Customer Service of the Year and Collaborator of the Year recognition in 2024. In 2023, she was also a finalist for Sales Growth of the Year and Collaborator of the Year.

Those awards say something important about construction.

Delivering a great project isn't only about the physical result. It's also about the experience people have while getting there.

For homeowners, the memories of a renovation aren't limited to the kitchen they eventually walk into. They remember the phone calls that were returned, the problems that were solved, whether they understood what was happening and whether they felt someone was taking responsibility for their project.

That human part of construction matters. A lot.

At Traft, we spend a lot of time thinking about the future of construction.

Technology is inevitably part of that conversation.

But increasingly, we think there is something more important worth talking about.

The people.

• The renovators who turn a family's ideas into something buildable.
• The builders who carry responsibility for hundreds of decisions nobody else sees.
• The estimators who understand what a drawing really means.
• The project managers who keep dozens of moving pieces together.
• The tradespeople whose skill ultimately determines whether an idea becomes reality.

Technology can support those people. It can remove repetitive work, make information easier to access and give construction teams more time.

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But technology isn't the hero of construction. People like Maree are.

And we think more of their stories deserve to be told.

Maree is the owner of Refresh Renovations Auckland Central, delivering residential renovation projects across central Auckland.

Her work spans full-home renovations, kitchens, bathrooms, extensions, interior design and other residential projects, supported by Refresh Renovations' design-and-build process.

Discover more about Maree and her work at Refresh Renovations Auckland Central.

People Behind Construction is a Traft series celebrating the builders, renovators, estimators, project managers, tradespeople and construction professionals shaping the places where we live and work. Our mission is to create more time for construction - and to make sure the people using that time to do exceptional work are recognised.